Russian 
(dobro pozhalovat') "welcome"
(dobro pozhalovat') "welcome" 
Introduction|
Russian is the largest of the Slavic languages. Along with Belarusian and Ukrainian, it belongs to the East Slavic group of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, Prior to the 14th century, ancestors of the modern Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians spoke varieties of Old East Slavic -- a language that was common to all three. Linguists think that it split into what are now Russian, Belarusan, and Ukrainian at the end of the 14th century. The official language in Russia remained an East Slavic version of Church Slavonic, the liturgical language of the Russian Orthodox Church, until the end of the 17th century. The political reforms of Peter the Great in the 18th century which included a reform of the Russian alphabet and westernization of the language through numerous borrowings from Western European languages resulted in a further move away from Church Slavonic norms. The standard language assumed its modern form in the 19th century.
Click on the MLA Interactive Language Map to see where Russian is spoken in the United States.
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in the other countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, as well in Eastern Europe. According to 
The Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing political changes brought new terminology and, along with the spelling reform of 1918, gave written Russian its modern appearance. Literacy became nearly universal and dialectal differentiation decreased in large part due to universal schooling and mass communications. Superpower accomplishments in military, scientific, and technological fields as well as space exploration gave modern Russian its world-wide prestige. 
Russian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of 
Until 1917, it was the sole official language of the Russian Empire. During the Soviet period, though each of the republics had its own official language, Russian enjoyed a superior status. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the lingua franca of the region has remained virtually unchanged. 
Education in Russian is still a popular choice for many of the first and second language speakers of Russian in the former Soviet republics. For instance, 75% of the public school students in 
Dialects
Linguists generally divide Russian into three major dialect groups: Northern, Central (transitional), and Southern. There are dozens of smaller variants within each major dialect group. Two features that typically distinguish the Northern from Southern dialects are given in the table below. The Central dialect, spoken around the Moscow area, combines the major features of both dialect groups.
| . | Northern | Southern | Central |
|---|---|---|---|
| unstressed vowel "o" | /o/ | /a/ | /a/ |
| voiced glottal fricative γ | absent | present | absent |
The standard language is based on but is not identical with the Moscow dialect.
Structure
Sound System
Vowels
Russian has five vowels: /i/, /e/, /a/, /u/, /o/. Each one is represented by two letters.
*This vowel is not found in English. It can be approximated by pronouncing /i/ with the tongue drawn back.
Vowel mutations
The following alternations are typical of Southern and Central dialects of Russian:
- The vowels /o/ and /a/ contrast only in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, both are pronounced as /a/ or as schwa (like the vowel in the English word but).
- The vowels /i/ and /e/ are differentiated only under stress. In unstressed positions, they are both pronounced as /i/.
Below is a table of Russian consonant phonemes, sounds that make a difference in word meaning.
| . | |||||
Stops (unpalatalized) |
p-b |
. |
t-d |
. |
k-g |
Stops |
p'-b' |
. |
t'-d' |
. |
. |
Fricatives |
. |
f-v |
s-z |
sh-zh* |
x |
| Fricatives (palatalized) |
. |
f'-v' |
s'-z' |
. |
. |
| Affricates (unpalatalized only) |
. |
. |
ts |
. |
. |
| Affricates (palatalized only) |
. | . | . | tsh |
. |
Nasals |
m |
. |
n |
. |
. |
| Nasals (palatalized) |
m' |
. |
n' |
. | . |
Lateral |
. |
. |
l |
. |
. |
| Lateral (palatalized) |
. | . | l' |
. | . |
Trill |
. |
. |
r |
. |
. |
| Trill (palatalized) |
. | . | r' |
. | . |
. |
. |
. |
j |
. |
*/zh/ is pronounced like the s in pleasure.
Click here for a more detailed description of Russian phonology.
Click here to listen to Russian audio lessons.
Russian is a highly inflected language.
Nouns
Russian nouns have the following distinguishing features:
- two numbers (singular and plural), there are also a few vestiges of the dual number;
- three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter);
- six cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional), the vocative case was lost except for a few words;
- animation: marked only in certain instances;
- three declensions;
- absence of articles; definiteness-indefiniteness can be expressed by demonstrative pronouns, word order, or intonation.
Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns are marked for person (first, second, and third), number (singular and plural) and case (same as for nouns above).
Adjectives
Adjectives, demonstrative and possessive pronouns precede the nouns they modify and agree with them in number, gender, and case.
Verbs
Russian verbs are quite complicated. They are marked for the following categories.
- two conjugations (first and second);
- three persons (first, second, third);
- two numbers (singular and plural);
- three genders (only in the past tense);
- three tenses (present, past, future; present and future have the same endings);
- two aspects (imperfective and perfective);
- four moods (indicative, imperative, conditional, hypothetical);
- three voices (active, middle, and passive).
Russian verbs agree with their subjects in person, number, and gender (only in the past).
Russian aspect involves grammar, lexicon, semantics, and pragmatics. Perfective verbs are formed by prefixation. The system is complex enough to have occupied generations of linguists and frustrated generations of learners.
Verbs of motion constitute a special subcategory of Russian verbs which is characterized by a complex system of directional and aspectual prefixes and suffixes.
Word order
The neutral word order in Russian is Subject-Verb-Object. However, other orders are possible. Inflectional endings take care of keeping clear grammatical relations and roles in the sentence. Word order is principally determined by topic (what the sentence is about, or old information) and focus (new information). Constituents with old information precede constituents with new information, or those that carry most emphasis. Here are some examples:
| Sasha ljubit Mashu. SVO |
"Sasha loves Masha." Neutral word order. No part of the sentence is emphasized. |
| Mashu ljubit Sasha. OVS |
It is Sasha who loves Masha (as opposed to someone else). |
| Sasha Mashu ljubit. SOV |
Sasha really loves Masha. |
Russian has a very large vocabulary estimated to be up to 500,000 words. It is difficult to determine what percent of Russian vocabulary is inherently Slavic and what percentage is borrowed. By some estimates, about half of it may consist of words borrowed at one time or another from other languages. This is even more true of scientific, technical, and political vocabulary.
Early borrowings into Russian from Old Church Slavonic, Greek, and Latin were associated with religious sources, and from Altaic languages associated with the Mongol invasion. Later borrowings came from French, German, Dutch, Italian, and English. Today, the major source of borrowing, particularly in the areas of scientific, political, and technical terminology, is English.
However, most of the basic vocabulary is inherently Slavic, hence it is quite similar across most Slavic languages. Below are some common phrases and words in Russian.
Writing
 Crime and Punishment
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The modern Russian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. It was introduced into Kievan Rus' at the time of its conversion to Christianity in 988 or perhaps slightly earlier, and has undergone significant changes since then, including major reforms in 1708 (during the rein of Peter the Great) and 1918 (after the October Revolution). The modern Russian alphabet has the following letters given below in their printed form. The longhand, or cursive, form for some letters is quite different.
Click here to learn more about the Russian alphabet. Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Russian. You can listen to the pronunciation of the text by clicking on the icon.
Russian is the language of major poets and writers whose work has been translated into dozens of the world's languages. Among them are Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov, Gorky, Blok, Nabokov, Pasternak, Yevtushenko. |
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Russian words in English
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Resources
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How difficult is it to learn Russian? Russian is considered to be a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English. |
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